Archive for February 24, 2010

Remember a few weeks ago when President Obama met with Republicans in an unscripted “question time?” Remember how pitiful the Republicans looked?

Fast forward to tonight. Far as I know, C-SPAN3 is the only television station set to air live coverage of the “health care summit” tomorrow. I misspoke the other day when I said MSNBC would carry it: Keith Olbermann clarified that tonight — MSNBC will air snippets and provide commentary. (I hate that — I don’t need to be told what I just saw.)

So I wonder: Has the “liberal media” succumbed to pressure from Republicans not to air this event in order to protect the GOP? Unless I hear otherwise — that the “summit” will be televised somewhere other than on C-SPAN3 — I say yes.

UPDATE: I’m pleasantly surprised that all three cable “news” outlets essentially aired the entire thing (but again, I turned it off when the pundits came on to spin tell me what I just heard.)

President Barack Obama on Wednesday made his second high-profile pitch in a matter of weeks for approval of free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, raising U.S. business community hopes for action this year on the long-stalled deals.

Read the article. It says that Obama told the group he wants to approve these new free-trade agreements because they’ll create jobs here in the U.S. Seems to me we’ve learned that the opposite happens with these things — corporations make out like bandits because they take jobs to the cheap labor in the countries we have agreements with.

A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) spokesman said the attack was “a tragedy that didn’t have to happen”.

“For years, PETA has been calling on Sea World to stop confining oceangoing mammals to an area that to them is like the size of a bathtub, and we have also been asking the park to stop forcing the animals to perform silly tricks over and over again,” spokesman David Perle said.

“It’s not surprising when these huge, smart animals lash out.”

Additionally,

Whale expert Nancy Black told Local 6 Tilikum [the name of the whale who killed the trainer] could have been playing in the latest attack and did not intend to hurt the trainer.

“They are very intelligent creatures,” Ms Black said.

“They have emotions, and feelings. Maybe it was unhappy in the situation, maybe it was bored.”

Amen.

My heart goes out to the victim and her family, and to those close to her and to those at SeaWorld who witnessed this tragedy, but it goes out to Tilikum too.

General Motors issued a press release today saying that the deal to sell its Hummer division to Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines Co., Ltd. of China fell through, so the Hummer is now officially dead.

Hallelujah! Producing a gas hog like the Hummer had to be one of the dumbest, most poorly timed business decisions ever.

Note to the media: Please don’t turn this into a three day rant about how vicious killer whales are. Per this 2005 article, there had never been a documented killer whale attack on a human as of that year, so this is a very isolated incident.